I was planning on being in Luton on Tuesday to visit my family, some of whom have recently returned from a few weeks in Pakistan. I am glad I did not as I may well have found myself inadvertently caught up in the protest by some former members of the banned organisation al-Muhajiroun who chose to welcome the returning soldiers of the Royal Anglican Regiment with placards calling them cowards, killers, extremists and baby killers.

As someone who grew up in Luton and is from a Muslim background my initial response to the images of the protest was utter dismay. Yet again the image of my hometown has been tarnished thanks to the actions of a tiny minority. There may have been only 20 protestors, but the black-clad young men and women made front-page news and yet again reinforced the impression that towns like Luton are hotbeds of a dangerous strain of radical Islam. It has become a commonplace to argue that such extremists do not represent the majority of Muslims; more personally, although I grew up in the same town as the placard wavers, they don't represent me and I strongly suspect the feeling is mutual. I am pretty sure that a Britain run according to the wishes of the burqa-wearing women and their Muslim brothers would not be a beacon of liberty, equality and tolerance, and thus this week's protests yet again highlight the irony of some Muslims enjoying a right to protest that others would be unlikely to enjoy in a country ruled by their brand of Islam. And yet even as I utterly condemn the Islamism propagated by the protestors, it is hard not to conclude that they are the victims of some curious double standards.

Last week a member of her Majesty's government was assaulted. The attacker was not greeted with universal criticism, instead the incident was treated as entertainment and the attacker was widely applauded for her actions. This week, another protest, no one was assaulted and yet the protestors have been labeled a hate mob and roundly condemned. Before discussing the differences between Leila Deen and the protest in Luton it is worth reminding ourselves of what the protests had in common.

In her piece for CifDeen argued she threw green custard at Lord Mandelson because "this government is impervious to mature debate. Remember the debate about Iraq? We marched, we debated, we won the argument. They invaded Iraq anyway." She used the word "illegitimate" to describe Mandelson, the same word that many who opposed the war use to refer to that military misadventure. So, both Deen and the Luton protesters were criticising government policies and both were articulating positions – opposing a third runway at Heathrow and British military action in Iraq – that have not insignificant popular support. And yet it is the differences that seem most striking: Deen is a photogenic articulate white woman while the female Muslim protesters resembled a gang of angry black ghosts. Deen's act of protest appeared benign and juvenile – any concerns about the safety considerations of Mandelson seem slightly surreal when confronted by the fact that Deen only threw custard. By contrast the protestors in Luton seemed to be not only un-British but also anti-British in an ugly and ominous way. And yet, as Deen pointed out, millions of Britons protested against the war in Iraq and so, even if one is repulsed by the precise tone of the protest, it is hard to claim that the protestors are representing an extreme point of view. If one criticises them for not being patriotic enough – not supporting "our boys" then surely the logical extension of that is that anyone who voices dissent against any government policy is unpatriotic. At the risk of labouring the point, I have no sympathy at all with the protestors and thus I find myself agreeing with Inayat Bunglawala's robustly critical assessment – although it should be added that, unlike Bunglawala, I was appalled by and critical of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie at the time, and not 20 years after the event.

It is precisely because I remember being so shocked at the calls for the death of Rushdie and the fiery bonfires of his books that blazed in Bradford that I ultimately draw some thin comfort from the sight of the protestors in Luton. That may sound a perverse conclusion to draw from seeing men and women waving placards that read "baby killers". And yet if we recall the violent reaction to the Satanic Verses, and more recently the Danish cartoons, the fact that this week we saw Muslims waving placards rather than burning books or flags represents progress of sorts. Which is why even if most of us find it distasteful it is hard not to argue that – so long as no laws were broken – the protesters have as much right to be offensive as a novelist, a cartoonist or a playwright do. But if the last fortnight's events have told us anything, it is that we will know when young radical Muslims are truly integrated into the British way of protest when they learn to stop hurling insults and start throwing custard.